History suggests that drones and humans are complementary rather than supplementary…

In a recent podcast at The Loopcast, titled “Everything You Wanted to Know About Drones but Were Too Afraid to Ask,” Matt (aka the “Drunken Predator Drone”) and Kelsey Artherton are hosted by Sina to discuss unmanned vehicles. Most of their discussion revolved around the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more colloquially termed in a larger scope regardless of domain of operation as “drones.” It is a good (and funny) discussion, and I do recommend you give it a listen if you have an interest in drones because few know more about them than these guys. However, for much of it (or at least the first 39 minutes of the podcast where they focus on aerial drones) dances around a topic that, I believe, gets too much attention: the supplementary function (replacement) of manned vehicles by unmanned vehicles.

To properly frame this discussion, first, we must understand the pattern of weaponry complement thus far. So far, for my money, no one has discussed this better than Dr. Jonathan House, in his workCombined Arms Warfare in the Twentieth Century:

The concept of combined arms in ground combat has existed for centuries, but the nature of that combination and the organizational level at which it occurred have varied greatly…. The concern of commanders has gone from coordinating the separate actions of separate arms, to achieving greater cooperation among those arms, to finally combining their actions to maximize the effect of all components of an armed force…. No matter how powerful a single arm—tanks, attack helicopters, or whatever—may be, that arm has many of the same strengths and weaknesses as its counterpart in the opposing army. As a practical matter, therefore, a carefully adjusted mixture of different weapons will almost always prove superior to a single type of weapon.

Historical conservatism and unit identity are not the only reasons for segregating the combat arms in this manner. In garrison, it is more efficient to concentrate all vehicles and weapons of one type in a single unit for ease of repair and maintenance. Similarly, individual soldiers or small crews with the same duties and weapons can be trained more effectively if they are concentrated in a single unit. In any event, no permanent combined arms organization, however well trained, would be equally prepared to deal with all different circumstances…. Every army must tailor its forces to the specific situation.

While these are some practical and very useful reasons for specialization, for whatever reason, House fails to identify the most critical reason for the segregation of arms into varying forms of disparate groups: their inherent and taxonomic philosophies of employment. This must also be considered especially from the various outlook of those who bear such arms, and their perceptions as to how it can be most effectively used within the natural constraints that the domain of employment (land, sea, air, space, and cyber) dictates to them. So while these tools of conflict must be used in a complementary fashion to achieve success, some unique sense of identity will and must still be maintained in each case.

The Battle of Agincourt from the Chroniques d’Enguerrand de Monstrelet

These aspects considered rightly, we can then understand why so much analysis tends to apply the technological-tactical aspects of weaponry rather narrowly, as a replacement for another, whether we are talking about our bare hands, rocks, swords, spears, longbows, tanks, airplanes, or even drones. Coming full circle, we see that our inclination is for revolutionary consideration of these weapons as replacements for other weapons in supplement, when in reality, what we are observing is more punctuated and merely evolutionary complement. To quote House, again, in an effort to prescribe what our awareness of complement should really look like:

First, the combined arms concept is the basic idea that different combat arms and weapons systems must be used in concert to maximize the survival and combat effectiveness of the others…. A second meaning of combined arms is combined arms organization, the command and communications structure that brings the different weapons together for combat…. Third, combined arms tactics and operations are the actual roles performed and techniques applied by these different arms and weapons in supporting one another in battle…. [Where,] supplementary combined arms increase the effect of one weapons system or arm by adding the similar effects of other weapons and arms…. Complementary combined arms, by contrast, combine different effects or characteristics, so that together they pose a more complicated threat, a dilemma for the enemy.

Finally, the Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Ray Mabus, has the correct sense of manned and unmanned vehicle complement at War on the Rocks in his article titled, “Future Platforms: Unmanned Naval Operations.” “The future of unmanned systems in the Navy and Marine Corps,” which Mabus leads, “is focused on incorporating our people on manned platforms with unmanned systems to create an integrated force.”

Proverbially speaking, there is nothing new under the sun, and yes that even applies to drones. House suggests the general pattern towards complement:

In [every] case, a three-stage pattern of organizational behavior appears.First, the army cannot find an organizational or doctrinal home for the new weapon. As a result, commanders tend to view the new technology as a specialized adjunct, useful only under certain conditions where the existing combination of arms and services has proved inadequate. Next, a group of enthusiasts seeks to make the new weapon into its own separate combat arm, in the process asserting exaggerated claims about its ability to achieve victory on its own, or perhaps with only one other existing combat arm. Because the enemy army is also having difficulty adjusting, the new weapon may, in fact, achieve a brief success as an independent arm. Ultimately, however, each side develops countermeasures to reduce and limit its effectiveness. Thereafter, the new weapon can no longer achieve victory by itself but must become a full-fledged member of the combined arms team. Within this expanded team, professional soldiers eventually reach a doctrinal solution, a shared concept of how to integrate the new weapon into the complementary effects of the other arms and services.

Combined Arms by CSP499 (DeviantArt)

Whether you call them drones, remotely piloted vehicles, or unmanned vehicles, they’re all just tools of warfare. And forgive the banality of the point, but tools of warfare are used by humans who seek to maximize violence against their adversary, and that requires complement rather than replacement. Most importantly, we should also recall that in non-linear positive-sum games, as combat is exhibited as, the interaction of people and weaponry leads to a cumulative advantage if used asymmetrically. As such, the vast balance of history teaches us that we will continue to perceive technological/tactical cycles as something of a progression of coordination (synchronization), to cooperation (integration), and then ultimately, to a combination for strategic effect (convergence). We’ve only just begun to conceive of drones in the proper terms of complement, and it is past time to do so.

Richard (Rich) F. Ganske is an officer in the U.S. Air Force and editor at The Strategy Bridge. The opinions expressed are his alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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